Above is a picture of St. Paul’s Outside The Walls, one of the four Papal Basilicas in Rome. We are planning to visit here during our stay in Rome. This is the only Basilica we have not visited previously.
Everything is set to go with the cruise portion of our trip. We received an email “upsell” offer from Princess Cruises, they were offering us an upgrade from our interior cabin to our choice of any remaining balcony cabin on the ship for $299.00 per person.
We called in to confirm which balcony cabins were included in the offer since it was a little confusing. The offer only two stated cabin categories, but appeared to be a range from one category type to the other, but that had little meaning to us, we have never seen a total listing of cabin types with their corresponding description before. It was confirmed by the cruise line representative that the offer was for any of the remaining balcony cabins on the cruise, which was a large list, we had counted over 140 balcony cabins remaining when we last visited the Princess website, many of them Deluxe Balcony cabins.
We decided to go ahead and take the offer, and upgraded to a Deluxe Balcony cabin on the Dolphin Deck (Deck 9), toward the forward-middle of the ship. Our original plan had been to try and hold out for a similar offer as the one we received on our last transatlantic cruise in April, where we had gotten a balcony cabin that also included free drink packages for both of us. However, when we compared the total price of the last cruise for a standard Balcony Cabin with the drink packages included, with this upgraded cabin offer and our purchasing the two drink packages, the prices were not that different, about $200 total. In addition, we were getting a better balcony cabin category on this cruise, a Deluxe Balcony. All in all, it was a good offer, and we had not ever stayed in a Deluxe Balcony on a Princess cruise before.
We picked out a cabin more toward the front of the ship since we like to hear the waves crashing against the bow, and we wanted to be forward of the lifeboats that hang out over the side of the ship on deck 7, which can obstruct the view directly downward into the ocean from the balcony. We had figured this out on the last cruise, we were only a couple of cabins forward of the lifeboats.
We are still finalizing our plans for the port calls, and also are formulating a plan for our time in Rome. Somewhat by accident, we found that the Vatican was requesting that you register online for free passes to pass through the Holy Doors at St. Peter’s Basilica. Stephanie was doing some online historical research on the doors when she came across the information on registering. This is mostly for crowd control, there are two time slots for each day, one in the morning, and the other in the afternoon. The registration was fairly simple, although it did get a little confusing in the end because the last two emails we received arrived in Italian instead of English, thank goodness for Google Translate. We are now just waiting on a confirmation of the actual time for the morning of Thursday, October 6. Additional research indicated that was a process for getting passes if you did not reserve in advance, and we also saw a few posts about there not being large crowds, and just walking in. However, those posts were during the time right after the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks, so that most likely had an impact on the crowd sizes.
We are also planning to visit the three other major papal Basilicas in Rome, San Paolo Fuori Le Mura (St. Paul’s Outside The Walls), San Giovanni in Laterano, and Santa Maria Maggiore, which is just a few blocks from our hotel. There is some good overall information on the four Basilicas at this web site for the Italy Magazine.
We have also planned out our walk from the Roma Termini train station to our hotel using Google Maps and Streetview. It is nice to have some idea of the buildings and other discernible landmarks along the walking route. It just makes it easier when we are tired from the overnight flight.